1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer and a printing system for receiving a print job from a host computer and printing it.
The present application is based on Japanese Patent Application No. Hei. 10-206144, which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
As for a conventional type printer, a host computer or a print server unilaterally sends a print job to a printer and the printer passively receives and processes it. FIG. 1 shows an example of connection in case a conventional type printer is used in network environment such as LAN. A printer 3, a print server 5 and host computers 7 and 9 are connected on a network 1. The host computers 7 and 9 send respective print job data 11, 13 to the print server 5 in steps S1 and S2. The print server 5 sequentially sends the job data 11, 13 to the printer 3 in S3 after the print server stores the job data in an auxiliary storage 5A such as a disk and queues it. The printer 3 processes the job data after it passively stores the job data from the print server 5 in a receive buffer memory 3A.
The print server 5 requires an auxiliary storage of very large capacity for storing job data. As the print server 5 is required in network environment, it costs. A printer also requires a receive buffer memory of large capacity for receiving job data. A printer always only prints under the initiative of a host computer and a print server and cannot spontaneously print (for example, cannot execute a print job set by a printer at time set by the printer).